In computer graphics, the trend towards higher resolution rendering of graphics images can provide users with improved experiences in various types of systems, including advanced gaming and virtual reality. The high-resolution rendering needs to be provided in systems that have limited performance and power budget to achieve reasonable frame rates.
Multi-rate shading of pixel data is an option to assist in addressing performance and power limitations for high-resolution rendering by enabling shading at varying granularities of the pixel data. In multi-rate rendering, it is possible to maintain rendering at a lower rate and limit higher resolution to areas in which the higher resolution is needed.
However, providing efficient multi-rate resolution for shading operation is challenging. In particular, a single monolithic shader may provide support for looping of certain inner loops in operation, but such inner loops are separated according to the particular granularity for rendering, which thus limits the efficiency of the shader.